イルカの日本語  Iruka no Nihongo
by Sakiku
Summary: Iruka has stumbled across a strange language: Japanese. To his surprise, studying it helps him discover quite a few things that make it much easier getting along in the ninja world.


**Disclaimer:** I don't own Naruto, neither the character(s) nor the fandom. I don't make any money from this.

**Summary:** Iruka has stumbled across a strange language: Japanese. To his surprise, studying it helps him discover quite a few things that make it much easier getting along in the ninja world.

**A/N:** A while ago, I found a great fanfic where the author combined Iruka teaching an English grammar lesson with some great plot. And then I thought, why not use that concept to try and teach some Japanese? I'm keeping it very easy, down to Naruto-relevant vocabulary. But I hope you have fun reading it!

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**イルカの日本語 - Iruka no Nihongo**

第一課 - (だいいっか) - Lesson One: Of Ninjas and Elements

"Oi, Iruka-sensei! What are you doing?" Grinning, Naruto appeared in a certain academy teacher's window, gripping the sill with chakra-enhanced toes.

Iruka never moved his eyes from the papers he was bent over. "勉強する。"

Naruto blinked. He hadn't understood a word. "What?"

"べんきょうする。"

Bemused, Naruto watched his former teacher shuffle some papers with some strange squiggly lines. "Are you drunk? I didn't understand a word you're saying, Sensei."

Finally, Iruka looked up, a distracted frown on his face. "Benkyou suru. I'm studying. Well, rather 'study' because I don't know how to construct the progressive form yet, and the 'I' is tacitly understood, but that's about it. What do you want, Naruto?"

Naruto's face lit up. "Let's go to Ichiraku's, sensei! I just got back from my super-secret mission to Cloud, and I've got lots of money. 'Bout time I paid for _your_ dinner for once. Come on, sensei!"

"Sorry, Naruto, another time maybe. I'm a bit busy studying."

"What are you studying? Those squiggly lines? Are they a new code?"

Iruka smiled and shook his head. "No. This is Japanese. Another language."

Naruto groaned. "Only you, sensei… Everybody knows that everyone in the Elemental Countries speaks the same language, and there you go and find a _new_ one. Don't you have enough to do with teaching _and_ mission room duty?"

"Oh, but Japanese isn't new. Actually, it'll help me a lot to know some basics." Iruka was already switching to his typical lecture mode. "Everything here makes so much more sense if you know some Japanese. Take us, for example. We're ninja, right?"

"Yeah…" Naruto drawled.

Iruka deliberately overlooked Naruto's complete disinterest. "Well, do you know what 'ninja' means? The word, not what being a ninja means to you," he added hastily before Naruto could once again go into his Hokage-spiel.

It didn't take Naruto long to answer. And the only reason why it took him any time at all was not because he was thinking, but because he was trying to decide if Iruka was serious. Which he apparently was. "Eh… 'Ninja' means 'ninja'. What kind of stupid question is that, Iruka-sensei?"

"Not a stupid question at all," Iruka chided him. "If you knew a bit of Japanese, you'd easily see that 'ninja' is a Japanese word, written like this: 忍者." He held up a scrap of paper where he had quickly sketched the characters. "And you know what this means?"

"More squiggly lines that aren't all that squiggly?" Still crouched on the window sill, Naruto didn't have any trouble making out the drawing. It didn't tell him anything though beyond what he already knew: that Iruka was going mad.

"No! It means that 'ninja' is made up of two parts, first 忍 or にん (nin), second part 者 or じゃ (ja). And you know what that means?" A nearly fanatical gleam was entering Iruka's eyes.

Naruto scowled and crossed his arms. He was by far less enamored with Iruka's new… hobby. "That your Japanese is faulty because everyone knows that ninja are made of three parts. Taijutsu, ninjutsu, and genjutsu."

That actually shut Iruka up for a moment. Then he broke out laughing. "Only you, Naruto. No, Japanese captures something that is much more essential to every ninja: 忍 is the character for 'stealth' or 'hidden', 'hiding'. And 者 is the character for 'person'. That means this," he held up the 忍者 paper, "is the word for 'stealth-person'. Ninja. Something that you still seem to be struggling with."

"Hey! I'm an awesome good ninja!" Naruto complained. "And anyway, I'm not only a ninja but also a shinobi, so there. Shinobi got all the cool techniques."

Chuckling, Iruka drew something beneath that strange word for 'ninja'. "You mean this?"

When he showed it to Naruto again, there was a very similar drawing beneath 忍者:

忍び.

Naruto groaned. "I told you there's got to be something faulty with your Japanese. There's no way that shinobi got to be stealthy, too. And anyway, you're just making this up. If 忍者 means 'ninja', then 忍び should mean nin-something. Not 'shinobi'."

"Ah. By the way, the び means 'bi', it's a hiragana character, one of the syllables the Japanese use to write down what things sound like. But, anyway, you ever seen the movie 'Shinobi: Heart under Blade'?"

"Sure! They've got some awesome fighting techniques! That Orochimaru-like dude with the extra-long animated hair was creepy, but the poison lady was awesome!" Naruto's enthusiasm though quickly waned to confusion. "But what's that got to do with things?"

Grinning, Iruka drew two more symbols. "This is 'heart': 心 and this is 'blade': 刃. Now, why do you think a movie called 'Shinobi' has the subtitle 'Heart under Blade'? I don't think you can get any more obvious than that."

Naruto pouted. "But that still doesn't explain why 忍者 reads 'ninja' and not 'shinoja' or stuff like that."

Iruka smiled a bit sheepishly. "That's where Japanese gets difficult, because they've imported all their characters from China. Well, most of them. They've actually got an alphabet that works like ours, by having a symbol for every sound, and then they write down how their words sound. The び of 忍び is exactly such a character. It's always read as 'bi'. But, anyway - Chinese characters like 忍can be read in different ways because they aren't letters, but more or less pictures of a certain thing. And that means there's how the Japanese pronounce the thing the character symbolizes, and there's the way how the Chinese pronounce it. That's called ON-reading for the Chinese way and KUN-reading for the Japanese way."

"Yeah, right," Naruto snorted skeptically. "You don't have to invent a whole other language just to justify that your Japanese doesn't make sense."

"It's you who just didn't make sense. But have you never wondered why you live in **hi** no kuni, want to become the **ho-**kage, and do **ka-**ton techniques? They're written like this." Iruka wrote down the three words.

火の国

火影

火遁

Naruto though seemed to spot something else. "Hey, that first symbol looks familiar! That's the symbol that's on the Hokage tower! And it's on Tsunade-baasan's hat, too!"

"I should hope that it looks familiar!" Iruka was close to rolling his eyes. "Seeing that 火 means 'fire', it would be a bit embarrassing if you didn't even know the symbol of your own country! And you want to be Hokage?"

"Hey, I know what 火 means! I'm not completely stupid!"

It was quite visible that Iruka was biting back a comment along the lines of 'Could have fooled me.' Instead though he said, "Then tell me the five great shinobi nations."

"Fire, Earth, Lightening, Water, and Sand. Hah, am I good or what?" Naruto beamed at Iruka.

Iruka couldn't help but smile back. "Almost. It's Wind, not Sand. And can you tell me what the five kage are?"

"Hokage, Tsuchikage, Raikage, Mizukage, and Kazekage. Come on, Iruka-sensei, I learned that like ages ago!"

"And I seem to recall that you had trouble remembering them less than a year ago. But, anyway, the kage are named after their countries, with the element, fire, earth, lightening, in the KUN-reading. Watch."

He once again wrote down the names, with the corresponding pronounciation once in hiragana and once in English.

火影 ほかげ hokage ******** 火の国 ひのくに hi no kuni

土影 つちかげ tsuchikage ***** 土の国 つちのくに tsuchi no kuni

雷影 らいかげ raikage ********雷の国 かみなりのくに kaminari no kuni

水影 みずかげ mizukage ****** 水の国 みずのくに mizu no kuni

風影 かぜかげ kazekage ****** 風の国 かぜのくに kaze no kuni

"The only exception is the Raikage, whose reading is ON. I guess that's because naming him Kaminarikage would have been too long. Or something. I still haven't quite gotten yet when which reading is used. Now tell me the five element releases."

Dutifully Naruto listed them, and Iruka immediately added them to the ever-growing list of squiggles and not-so-squiggly squiggleys.

火遁 かとん katon

土遁 どとん doton

雷遁 らいとん raiton

水遁 すいとん suiton

風遁 ふうとん fuuton

Iruka pointed to them. "See? The same characters for the elements, but now it's the ON reading. If you can read the five element characters, you'll always know in which of the five great villages you are. The kage towers are all painted with the element-symbol."

Naruto looked at him strangely. "Why can't I just look at the people? Kumogakure's got dark skin, Iwagakure all look like Akimichi with bad noses, Sunagakure's got those strange head-wear veils, and Kirigakure all look so fishy. And anyway, I just look at the headbands, and then it's kind of obvious where I am."

Iruka inhaled as if to say something, then exhaled again. And then he shook his head. "I give up. Come on, let's go to Ichiraku's. You're paying, you said?"

"Yes, yes, now come on, Iruka-sensei!" Naruto was bouncing impatiently on his feet, still crouched on Iruka's window sill as he had been during their entire impromptu Japanese lesson.

"Oh, and one last thing, Naruto," Iruka smiled saccharinely. With a few quick, deft strokes, he sketched something else on his pad:

ラーメン

He showed it to Naruto, who looked at it blankly, and then back at Iruka.

Iruka's smile got even sweeter as he explained with a dangerous glint in his eyes. "Wouldn't want you to miss your favorite noodle stand, just because you can't read that they're advertising their ramen in big, fat, red characters on the outside of their shop for everyone to see. Now let's go."

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**A/N:** What do you think of this? I know, it's just a first introduction, but do you think such a concept might work for further 'lessons'? I'm very much looking forward to hearing what your opinion is on this!

Sakiku


End file.
